ully over it in every direction; but my rides are drawing to a
close and even were I to remain here this must be the case unless I got up
and rode under the stars in the cool of the night. This afternoon I was
obliged to drive up to St. Annie's: I had promised the people several
times that I would do so. I went after dinner and as late as I could, and
found very considerable improvement in the whole condition of the place;
the houses had all been swept, and some of them actually scoured. The
children were all quite tolerably clean; they had put slats across all
their windows, and little chicken gates to the doors to keep out the
poultry. There was a poor woman lying in one of the cabins in a wretched
condition. She begged for a bandage, but I do not see of what great use
that can be to her, as long as she has to hoe in the fields so many hours
a day, which I cannot prevent.

Returning home, Israel undertook to pilot me across the cotton fields into
the pine land; and a more excruciating process than being dragged over
that very uneven surface in that wood wagon without springs I did never
endure, mitigated and soothed though it was by the literally fascinating
account my charioteer gave me of the rattlesnakes with which the place we
drove through becomes infested as the heat increases. I cannot say that
his description of them, though more demonstrative as far as regarded his
own horror of them, was really worse than that which Mr. G---- was giving
me of them yesterday. He said they were very numerous, and were found in
every direction all over the plantation, but that they did not become
really vicious until quite late in the summer; until then, it appears that
they generally endeavour to make off if one meets them, but during the
intense heats of the latter part of July and August they never think of
escaping, but at any sight or sound which they may consider inimical, they
instantly coil themselves for a spring. The most intolerable proceeding on
their part, however, that he described, was their getting up into the
trees, and either coiling themselves in or depending from the branches.
There is something too revolting in the idea of serpents looking down upon
one from the shade of the trees to which one may betake oneself for
shelter in the dreadful heat of the southern midsummer; decidedly I do not
think the dog-days would be pleasant here. The mocassin snake, which is
nearly as deadly as the rattlesnake, abounds all